The acknowledged Internet giant, Google, officially announced the other day that their computer operating system called Chrome OS will be available by middle of 2010. The IT world has long suspected that Google will be coming out with its own operating system so it really did not come out to be a big surprise when the giant confirmed the existence of the project. Google Chrome OS as described in the official blog of the company will be directly competitive with Microsoft Windows operating systems.
The official announcement describes the Google Chrome OS as something that will be quick, light-weight and tailored for a “cloud computing” trend of offering applications online as services. The OS will be ideal for low-cost, light-weight netbooks as well as for PC desktops. The “cloud services” that will be strongly supported by the Chrome OS will compete directy with Outlook, Word and other Microsoft applications software. Chrome OS could become a viable challenger to the Windows operating systems on which Microsoft’s global empire was built, according to analysts.
Could this be the product that many Internet café owners are waiting? The café industry in the country as well as in many third world countries cannot deny the fact that many of them are using pirated or cracked Microsoft products. The open source Linux operating systems have been around for sometime but its applicability to the needs of the internet café industry can be described as wanting because of their lack of support on majority of popular online games where the gets its major part of revenues.
According to Google’s official blog, Chrome OS is an open source operating system and that the company will soon be working with the open source community because it wanted to share its vision now so everyone understands what Google is trying to achieve. And this is the good news to everyone especially to the majority of the current players in the Internet café industry.
For its further description of Chrome OS, the Google blog says,
Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.
What more can I say except let’s wait for what we were hoping for to happen. After all, open source advocates have always said ideas are free so the results of such ideas must also be free. I believe in some limitations though.
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Owning a Café
